


(She Thinks She’s) The Passionate One

by Lanerose



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen, Hikago Team Deathmatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7831063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanerose/pseuds/Lanerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Industrial Go makes sweet music together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(She Thinks She’s) The Passionate One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phnx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phnx/gifts), [rex_sun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rex_sun/gifts).



> I blame my teammates, who refused to talk me out of this even when I asked them to.
> 
> Also, the theme to which this fic responds is "sweet," and the fic is loosely based off the band Sweet's song Ballroom Blitz, because that's what google came up with when I was looking for "sweet."

Akira tries very hard not to fidget as Hidaka stirs her coffee at the little cafe where they have met for their . . . well, Akira’s not entirely clear on what it is, but Hidaka seemed satisfied as she guided him here, so that’s probably acceptable for the moment. Hidaka has been his friend since she stopped him from singing while the seniors in the glee club took turns punching him in the stomach. She doesn’t ask much, and really, a trip to a coffee shop for whatever reason isn’t a big deal. He takes a sip of the cola that Hidaka insisted he try instead of his usual tea and tries not to wince at the taste. He puts the drink down and folds his hands neatly in his lap.

“So . . . .” Akira starts, but Hidaka, who had taken a sip of her coffee, shakes her head.

“Just trust me,” Hidaka says as she puts her cup back down into its saucer. “It shouldn’t be long now. They’re already setting up.”

Akira looks around. At the front of the cafe, there’s a sound system with a microphone. A couple of techs are fiddling with the equipment, and finally someone produces a stool and sets it in front of the mike. Akira glances at Hidaka out of the corner of his eye.

“Trust me,” she repeats. Her lips quirk up. “There he is.”

Akira turns back, and there’s a boy about his age with bleached-blond hair and a guitar settling onto the stool. He’s about to ask Hidaka exactly what this is about when the boy opens his mouth.

“I’m Hikaru Shindou,” he says, and Akira can tell from the way he speaks and the way his hands are resting on the guitar that he knows what he’s doing.

The boy doesn’t say anything else, just starts plucking out a tune. It’s fast and sharp, and Akira knows he’s heard the tune before so it must be a cover, but it sounds like the original. When he opens his mouth to sing, his voice is rough, but oddly enough it works for the song.

“I need your love,” Hikaru Shindou nearly screams as he sings, and Akira winces in sympathy for what that must be doing to his throat, but he can’t tear his eyes away as the song leaves the chorus and heads into a second verse, key shifting and sound softening. He listens the whole time, an intense, deep kind of listening that goes down to marrow of his bones and is still within them long after the blonde has packed up his guitar and had his place taken by some idiot who is murdering the Beatles’ All You Need is Love.

“It’s by the Black Stones,” Hidaka says, and Akira looks up at her, surprised. He blushes, and she smiles more broadly. “The song. It’s by the Black Stones.” She grins so her teeth show. “He plays it better than they did.”

Akira takes a sip of his cola and nearly spits it out again, but chokes it down. Hidaka is grinning when he looks up, and she’s already gotten the check from their waitress and handed her money over to cover it, which Akira wishes she hadn’t done because it makes him feel like he’s using bad manners. “I’m sorry, Hidaka, is he why we came here?”

“You can catch up with him in the far corner,” Hidaka says as she puts her wallet back into her purse. She polishes off her coffee and leaves the cup on the saucer as she stands. “Or you might take the mike. Unless you don’t still want to be in a band?”

Akira considers what he could say to that. First and most important would be to ask how Hidaka even knew that he was planning to join a band, although with his father, maybe she had simply considered it a foregone conclusion. Everyone else does.

They’re not wrong.

“I’ll see you on Monday, Touya,” Hidaka says, but he’s not even looking at her anymore, and by the time he does look back, she’s gone.

That leaves him with Hikaru Shindou. There are two men standing beside him, one with an arm around his shoulder and rubbing a fist against his head, the other laughing with his eyes even as he tries to pull the first one off Hikaru.

Akira signs his name on the open mike sign-up sheet.

***

It goes surprisingly easy after that. They approach him the minute he steps down from singing an acapella version of Walkin’ on the Sun that he fits to Shindou’s aesthetic. Ten minutes later he’s got a date and a location for a tentative rehearsal to maybe see about becoming a band, and ten days after that they’re setting up to play a gig.

Yoshitaka Waya plays drums. He’s good. Not great - not yet, anyway, but he’s got enough promise to make it worth Akira’s while to stay. He’s also living with Shinichiro Isumi, the bassist for the band, because his parents couldn’t understand his ambitions.

“Yo, blueblood!” Waya calls as Akira walks into the club. Waya’s . . . Akira would say a little, but the truth is it’s a lot. Waya’s a lot jealous of Akira’s family background, and if it hadn’t become something funny it would have gone really ugly, really fast.

“Waya, you said you’d stop calling him that!” Isumi protests, but Akira shrugs it off. The club is small - a real hole in the wall, maybe twenty tables and six or so stools at the bar, but it’s got a stage and a recording system, and beggars can’t be choosers.

They’re the third act, going on at 10 pm, and when they slide carefully past the tables and the outgoing country music act, Akira looks up to see a surprisingly full room. He recognizes Hidaka sitting along the right wall, near the back, sipping yet another cup of coffee and smiling like she was expecting to see him. He recognizes one other face - Ogata, a former band mate of his father’s, who is sitting in the corner opposite Hidaka with yet another bottle of beer.

“We’re Industrial Go!” Akira tells the crowd as the others tune their instruments. “We hope everyone is having a great time so far!”

The crowd gives a lame little cheer and Akira can’t blame them because really? Country music?

“We’re going to turn the volume up!” The crowd cheers a little more at that, and really picks up once Waya counts them off and the music starts.

Things are going great through the first three songs, and Akira can feel the crowd with them as he sings better than he ever has before. Then Ogata, who is looking more sober than he is based on his actions, smirks at him and throws a beer bottle that hits a guy in the front row, and everything goes to hell.

***

“It was for your own good,” Ogata tells his answering machine. “Everyone needs to know what it feels like not to be appreciated on stage.”

Akira considers this, sits down, and starts to write.

***

Four months later, it’s opening night of their all-Japan tour. The song has gone to number one on the charts in Japan, and there’s talk of moving the tour abroad as well since it’s climbing the charts in Korea and China. Thousands of girls try to throw themselves at Akira as he enters the venue, only really feeling safe when he sits down beside Hikaru in the dressing room. Hikaru doesn’t stay seated for long, gets up and bounces around and stretches and bends and tries to get Akira to join him. Akira caves, but only for a few minutes, before he makes Hikaru sit down so that he’ll still have some energy on stage.

The crowd roars as they run out. Akira grabs the mike, pulling it from the stand and wrapping the cord around his hand. Behind him, Isumi’s bass starts playing.

“Ready, Shin?” He calls. The recording company made him change from last names to first - said it was a better sell because it was more intimate. They don’t appear to have been wrong.

“Uh-huh.” Isumi says, and the drums chime in.

“Yoshi?” Akira asks, and god, that will never not be weird. Waya is Waya.

“Yeah.” Waya says, and he’s grinning like he stole something. The guitar joins in.

“Hikaru?” He says, and the energetic boy who drew him into Industrial Go steps into his line of sight, pick moving smoothly over his guitar.

“Okay.” Hikaru says, smiling brightly. Akira looks out at the audience, and maybe he imagines it, but he thinks he sees Hidaka sitting in the front row.

“All right, fellas.” Akira says. “Let’s GO!”

**Author's Note:**

> Yahtzee bonus points if you spotted the pseudo-crossover. :D


End file.
